Fellow Matthew Lunning describes a retrospective study that examined event-free and overall survival among patients with relapsed/refractory follicular lymphoma and remission duration of a year or less to their last chemotherapy session (prior to re-induction therapy), who subsequently received either high-dose therapy/autologous stem cell rescue or allogeneic stem cell transplantation. Among the subgroup with poor remission duration, three-year event-free survival was significantly longer for the allogeneic transplant group (79 percent) than with the autologous rescue group (36 percent).

Dr. Lunning addresses the need for clinical trials that reduce the risk of graft-versus-host disease without harming efficacy.